EPSO verbal reasoning test: format, timing and the nine traps

The verbal reasoning test is 20 questions in 35 minutes, about 1 minute 45 seconds each, sat in your language 1. It is also the only Part 1 score carried into the AD5 ranking, which makes it the test to prepare hardest for. Here is how a question is built, the traps the wrong options use, a worked example and a method for the time you have.

What a question looks like

Each question is a single paragraph of general non-fiction, between about 70 and 130 words in English, on anything from science to history or economics. Below it, a fixed question asks which of four statements is correct, and exactly one of them is supported by the passage alone. No knowledge of the EU is needed. Outside knowledge can even mislead you, because the question is about what the passage says, whatever you know of the world.

In the ten verbal questions of EPSO’s public sample, the right statement is one of three kinds: a close paraphrase of one sentence, two or three facts from different sentences joined into one, or a single step of inference that the passage forces. It seldom repeats the passage word for word, so matching words is a poor guide.

Why it matters more than the other two tests

You need 10 out of 20 to pass. Only the verbal score then goes on to count: 40% of the preliminary ranking and 35% of the final ranking. Every extra verbal mark in November moves you up a list on which about 117 applicants compete for each place. The details are in how Part 1 is scored.

The nine traps in the wrong options

Every wrong option has to be provably wrong from the passage, and in practice each one fails in one of a small number of ways. These are the nine we build our own wrong options on, from a close reading of EPSO’s sample:

1. Reversal: the statement says the opposite of the passage. The passage says rents fell after the factory closed; the option says they rose.
2. Absolute wording: only, always, never or all, where the passage hedges. The passage says most visitors arrive by train; the option says they arrive only by train.
3. Quantity or frequency shift: most for some, often for sometimes, many for a few.
4. Added cause or comparison: the passage reports two facts, and the option claims that one caused the other, or that one is larger, with no basis in the text.
5. False link: two terms that sit near each other in the passage are joined into a claim the passage never makes.
6. Not stated: plausible, perhaps even true in the real world, and absent from the passage. The hardest to spot when the topic is familiar.
7. Name confusion: two similar names, places or groups swapped.
8. Merged numbers: two figures from different contexts read as a trend or a comparison.
9. Scope shift: what was true of one region, one case or one period becomes true of the whole country, every case or all time.

A worked example

Here is a question of our own in the same format. Give yourself 1 minute 45 seconds before you open the answer.

A method for 105 seconds

1. Read the passage once, at working speed. Note what it claims, what it only suggests, and every hedge: “some”, “may”, “most”, “often”, “about”.
2. Take the options one at a time and look for the words in the passage that make each one true. Cross out every option you can break.
3. Check the survivor against the exact wording. If two options survive, compare their quantifiers and their scope: one of them has stretched the passage.
4. Move on at about two minutes. Choose your best option, bookmark the question and come back if time allows. The notice scores each test as a count of correct answers and mentions no deduction for wrong ones, so never leave a question blank.
5. Use the answer elimination tool. The platform lets you strike out options you have ruled out, which saves reading them again.

If you sit it in Italian, or another language

The clock is the same in every language. The passages are longer in some: measured on EPSO’s own sample, they run about a fifth longer in Italian, Spanish, French, Greek and Romanian than in English. That means less time per word, so reading speed matters more. Practise in the language you will be tested in, because the traps sit in small words such as “most”, “only” and “often”, and they work a little differently in each language.

How to practise

• Untimed first, for accuracy. Work through a set of passages with no clock and name, for every option you reject, the trap it uses. Speed comes from recognising traps quickly.
• Then timed, 20 at a time, in 35 minutes, on screen.
• Review every mistake, including the questions you got right by luck: find the words that decide the answer.

Each of our six mock tests contains 20 verbal questions in this format, in English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian and Spanish, with a worked answer naming the words that break every wrong option. The free test has 20 of them. For a schedule, see our three-week plan.